A stethoscope is an important tool for medical doctors to perform diagnosis of patients. Conventionally, a stethoscope comprises a single chest piece which is usually to be placed on the body of the patient, such as chest or stomach, to receive vibration signals therefrom and a pair of binaurals having ear tips to be inserted into the ears of the doctor to supply the vibration signals to the doctor. A tubing, usually made of rubber or similar material, is connected between the chest piece and the binaurals for transmission of the vibration of the patient's body to the ear tips.
However, since there are different vibration signals of different frequencies generated inside the human body and different signals provide different information to the doctor, in doing diagnosis, the doctor may have to switch between two or more different stethoscopes for picking up signals of different frequencies. This is quite cumbersome to the doctor.
To overcome such a problem, a stethoscope having a turret on which two or more chest pieces are mounted has been developed, as shown in FIG. 4 in which the tubing 10 has a turret type adapter 12 fixed to an end thereof with two chest pieces 14 mounted on the turret 12. Such a multiple chest piece stethoscope allows the doctor to switch between the chest pieces by rotating the turret 12. Such a device has a disadvantage that mechanical wearing usually occur in the turret after a long term service of the stethoscope.
Furthermore, those conventional stethoscopes are the so-called "fixed" design which needs to be periodically disassembled for maintenance and cleaning purpose and the disassembling operation may need hand tools. This is, to some extent, inconvenient and troublesome to the doctors.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a stethoscope structure which allows the medical doctors to swiftly switch between different chest pieces and provides easy maintenance and cleaning so as to overcome the drawbacks of the prior art designs.